Tree Care in Homewood, AL

Homewood's neighborhoods were mostly built between 1960 and 1980, and the trees planted then are now 50 to 60 years old. That age matters. Southern Live Oaks and Southern Magnolias that started as yard trees are now 60, 70, even 80 feet tall, and older trees carry older problems that aren't always visible from the ground. With 53 inches of rain per year and 8 months of growing season, trees here put on a lot of wood fast, but fast growth in the South often comes with included bark and weak attachment points. The thing most Homewood homeowners don't realize: if you have a large shade tree in your front yard and your house was built in the 1970s, there's a real chance it's a green ash. Emerald Ash Borer has been working its way across the eastern US and is now established in Jefferson County. Once a green ash is infested, it's dead within a few years, and dead ash trees go brittle remarkably fast. Bradford pears are another Homewood staple from that era, planted widely through the 1980s. They split at their V-shaped crotches almost on schedule around age 20 to 30, and a lot of them in this area are exactly there now.